When wandering round the Orgatec, Cologne’s office furniture fair, it was as good as impossible to miss the Hay trade-fair booth: Its entire architecture was made up exclusively of elements from Stefan Diez’ “New Order” and presented a variety of scenes from the world of offices and homes so familiar to us, scenarios solved very intelligently in spatial terms. On show was an intimate zone for concentration alone or for meetings, nestling between two shelving modules, stacked to tower up over two meters high and with walls that boasted acoustic panels; right next to it was a classic office situation with three desks connected to a sideboard; two desks were ingeniously bonded with shelving elements and another desk was for standing users.

“New Order” enables you to realize complex and flexible spatial structures that can forever be changed and adapted to new requirements. It is amazing just how much variety is possible using this system. Although the shelf boards are only available in four lengths and in one width, by adding extra elements, such as shelf boards and tables, you can create any manner of overlaps and connections that structure a “new order”.

The elements

So what are the elements of this “New Order”? First there are the shelves, which come in standard lengths of 34, 100, 150 and 200cm and are also to be had in a “Tray” version with an edge almost 8cm high. Then there are side profiles that are 33cm high. All of them are made of aluminum – which provides enough stability to hold the 200cm-long shelf board. Other items in the family include table tops made of wood and linoleum ranging in length from 100cm to 280cm; they can be fastened onto the shelves as work tops – at which you either sit or stand. Or they can be assembled with their own legs as standalones.

Wall panels and smoothly functioning folding sliding doors made of wood as well as upholstered acoustic panels that double up as pinboards all create even more order. While the wall panels and doors are available in four different colors (ash, oak, lacquered wood in the colors “charcoal” or “light gray”), the sound-absorbing boards can be supplied in the new Kvadrat fabrics. And to top it all, assembling your New Order to taking it apart again is child’s play thanks to a modular slot-together system that requires very few screw connections.

Stefan Diez has also designed any amount of accessories to keep those small things in order, too. There’s a container, an upholstered bench element, metal book ends, and cork holders for pens and paper. The latter are particularly charming, as they can be laid in your “Tray” or simply placed on the edge of the same.

A new world

“New Order” is a genuine Stefan Diez: All the elements are perfectly calibrated and thought through. Nothing is superficial and nothing disturbs the clear, minimalist look. Diez achieved this by using the ingenious connector elements that mean the individual modules can be joined together in as good as an invisible way – there’s the “Connector”, for example, which hooks the shelves up to the table top, or the double or corner profiles that are used to link shelving modules. Nevertheless, it’s a “new” Diez as the Munich-based designer is now presenting not just stunning individual items, but a veritable system, and thus making his first inroads into the contract market. In the form of Hay and in particular in the person of its MD Rolf Hay Diez seems to have found the right partners with whom to realize his view of things. The joint venture is most obviously bearing fruit, as can be seen from his enthusiasm as regards side-shows, such as marketing. In fact Diez helped design the catalog, the “New Order” Website and the Ipad App (available from November). Here, you can immerse yourself in the world of Diez’s office system, browse different office settings and then insert them in personally configured spatial settings. After all, and this is what makes “New Order” so exciting, Diez’s New Order is not rigid but extremely adaptable.